Z Egloff was born in California, raised in the Midwest, and schooled (academically and otherwise) on the East Coast. She currently resides in Northern California. Verge is her first published novel.
Why are you a writer?
Unlike a lot of writers, I had no idea I was one until later in life. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actress. I played Lucy in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” in seventh grade. That was the highlight of my career in the theater. Once I got to college, the desire to pursuing acting faded away. Unfortunately, it wasn’t replaced with anything else.
I remember my college friend Cathy Ciepella looking at me very seriously, a few months before we graduated, and telling me I was going to have a good life. She seemed to be speaking with a hidden authority, as if she’d checked in with God over breakfast, gotten the 411 on my life path, and was now delivering it to me with the utmost sincerity and simplicity. And I believed her.
I still didn’t know what I was supposed to do with this “good life,” though. During this same period of time, I could see my future looming ahead of me, forking into an easy path or the proverbial road less traveled. I knew I could move ahead along that straight, brainless highway, step onto the corporate conveyer belt alongside my peers, and have a suffocating existence. Or I could take the unknown route, forge ahead into a life I couldn’t control or predict. I thought I was brave to take the hard route, but one of the realizations of the past few years has been that, despite what I thought at the time, I chose the easier path. Following my gut, taking the risk of living life on my own terms, has – in many ways – been a wide, easy road. Certainly easier than stuffing my quirky, freaky self into a corporate box.
So I began a series of jobs and careers. I was (in this order): a chambermaid, a gardener, a secretary in a law firm (one last shot at convention), a cashier in a health food store, a PhD candidate in an interdisciplinary philosophy program, a line worker in a snack factory (don’t ask), a manager of a small farm, a marriage and family counselor in Oakland, and a case manager with teen moms and their siblings.
Then came Kerry Weaver and ER. At the time, I was toiling away at that last job, working with teenagers. It was a great gig, fulfilling in many ways, but still not quite right. I was living with my then-partner and her two kids, working full time, and trying to chillax on the weekends. My partner and I were both too busy with our jobs and the kids to have much of a social life, let alone participate in the Sonoma County lesbian social scene (which was ironic, because said social scene was the reason we moved to Sonoma County in the first place). So I got my lesbian fix from books, TV, and the movies. Not that there were many dykes populating the airwaves or movie screens, but the minute anyone slapped one up there, I was around to witness it. Having grown up in the Midwest in the 70s, where the dykiest thing on TV was The Bionic Woman (Jamie Summers, ahhhhhhhhh), I was still a sucker for a little bit of representation, paltry though it often was.
I first read about the Kerry Weaver coming out storyline in the The Advocate. I’d never watched ER before, but if there were going to be lesbians cropping up in that hospital, no way was I going to miss them! I was hooked right away. So much so, I worried that I was perhaps a tad bit obsessed. But I’d learned from my spiritual practice that there’s gold in dem dar hills of obsession, so I gave into the process. Including going online and participating in the growing community of other obsessed fans. Some of whom were writing “fan fiction,” short pieces inspired by the characters on the show. Given that the Kerry Weaver/Kim Legaspi storyline was just a small part of the overall ER ensemble, there was lots of room for inventing all kinds of scenes, scenarios, and wacky hijinks for our heros Kerry and Kim.
I jumped right in. I wrote my first piece and it was like taking crack. (No actual experience in that department, but from what I hear. . .) My relationship to the show completely shifted as I realized that I could, with my imagination and a pen, control the fates of characters that had been, up until then, outside the bounds of my influence. My obsession shifted from ER to writing. Literary crack. It was blissful.
It still is. That’s why I write. Because I love it. It’s a kick, a high, a spiritual experience. It’s fun fun fun, and I feel blessed every day that I get to do it.
But isn’t writing supposed to be hard? Torturous? Aren’t you supposed to suffer for your art?
Well. . . . There is another side to it. Screwed-up, booze-guzzling writers, slogging away at their precious prose, mining their misery for gold. It’s one of the reasons I stopped drinking when I started writing. And I understand the clichés. Being creative means putting yourself out there, opening yourself up to everything inside you, and along with the inspired, spiritually-fed stream of inspiration can come those pesky chunks of crud – fear, self-doubt, rants and rages of your inner child. It’s like therapy. Except it’s just you and the page. And it goes on way longer than 50 minutes a week.
In my case, writing has brought out more of my demons than anything else I’ve ever done. Not the actual writing itself, that’s still awesome. It’s more what comes up after. I pick up a page of my stuff later in the day and in marches
Swamp Thing, Literary Critic Extraordinaire.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Z, really. But it’s just not very good. Your other book was better. Much. Why don’t you write like that again? Maybe you’ve lost your touch, what little you had to begin with. Maybe you can’t do this anymore.” Dude. No fun. But Swamp Thing was way louder and more persuasive when I first started writing. That’s when she was trying to get me to stop writing altogether. Now she’s smaller, like a smurf. And I don’t take her as seriously anymore. Indeed, I think that taming Swamp Thing is one of the reasons I’m supposed to be a writer. So it’s all good, as the kids say.
But what about negative feedback from others? And rejection? What about that?
Yes. That’s part of the process. With feedback from others, the most important thing for me has been to differentiate between constructive criticism and abuse. Constructive criticism can hurt at first, but there’s this part inside me that’s nodding, saying, “That’s true. You need to change that. It will make the book better.” When it’s abuse, there’s no inner nod, just Swamp Thing made manifest in outer form.
I’ve also learned that some people like my work and others don’t, and that I’m writing for those who do. That’s been an important lesson as well. Yes, there are things I can do to fix what I’ve written, to make it better, but there will always be people who still won’t like it. Ain’t nothing I can do about that. (Yes, the double negative probably indicates some subconscious resistance to this notion, but my resistance prompts me to ignore it.)
As for rejection, it’s another part of the package. But it’s also been extraordinarily helpful for me to imagine success. I started visualizing my publishing posse – agents, editors, publicists, etc. – as soon as I started writing. Very helpful, very effective. As for the rejection that has come along the way, it’s been difficult. Some of it has caused me to temporarily give up. But whatever it is that caused me to write in the first place is amazingly strong, and It always seems to prevail in the end.
What’s your writing process? How do your books get written?
When I first started writing, I didn’t plan anything. I just wrote. Given that it was fan fiction, and the characters and storyline were already laid out for me, the lack of planning didn’t slow me down. When it came time to dive into my first novel, I read some “how to” books, like “How to Write a Damn Good Novel,” most of which recommended outlining. So I did.
As time has gone on, I’ve come to rely more and more on outlining. Now I begin by doing research on the subjects that will be touched upon in the novel, a process that gets my mind churning with ideas for plot and character, ideas I jot down and put in a huge file on my computer. Some writers complain that outlining seems too rigid, but for me, the stage that proceeds the outline is absolutely free form. This brainstorming phase is a time to explore the endless possibilities of the book. I’ll literally type on the keyboard: “What if she ate the onion? What would happen then? Does she choke on it? If she did, then XYZ would happen. But if she didn’t, then QRC would happen. And what about Smeigal, how would she react to it?” It’s incredibly fun and freeing to simply let my imagination run with all the options. New ideas pop into my head when I’m driving, meditating, trying to sleep. It’s like giving myself over to the book and letting itself find form through me. I know, I know, it’s hard to talk about this without sounding cheesy, but there you have it. The magical creation process. It’s born out of the void beyond language.
But all good voids must morph into substance, and that’s what comes next. The outline. I take all the ideas, plot directions, character quirks, and shape them into time and space. And, like the brainstorming phase, there is a certain amount of intuitive progression here, following what feels right. There’s also the drama factor, going for conflict, looking for ways to get my characters into trouble so they can try to get themselves out of it.
Once the outline clicks into what feels like its final form, it’s time to write. And once I start that first draft, I stick pretty close to the outline. Except for when I don’t. One book I wrote had two characters who were ex-lovers and now best friends. The outline had them as best buds throughout the book, no nookie. The minute I began writing, I realized that there was still tons of sexual tension there and no way were they going to get through the novel without a few visits to the love shack. Who knew? Not me. The best use of an outline is as an organic entity, bending to the will of the characters and the creative stream.
Once the book has gone through a few drafts, fixing all the stuff that I know needs fixing, I give it to my draft readers. In all the books I’ve done so far, I’ve had about 10 people read it. Some of them writers, some just people who like to read. I’ve found this feedback loop extremely helpful, even though it usually involves more than a few visits from Swamp Thing. With Verge, I worked with a teacher, Anne Matlack Evans, who did a final read once my draft readers were through. I suspect I’ll use a similar procedure with future books.
What’s your writing schedule?
When I first started writing, I was working 40 hours a week for my County job, so I wrote whenever I could. Usually at night and on the weekends. Then I went to part time with my County job, and I was able to write every morning for four hours. I wrote seven days a week. I was crazed. I was so happy to have discovered what I love to do that I couldn’t stop doing it. Until life barged in and demanded that I create a smidgen more balance. So I began taking Sundays off. Then Saturdays. I coasted on this schedule for a few years, becoming a weekday writer, four hours a day. Then I had some particularly negative feedback to novel number three that hit me really deeply and I knew I needed to reevaluate what I was doing. So I took six months off. I’d been writing for over six years at this point, and it felt totally appropriate. (Though I would never have been able to imagine doing this when I was in my hyperactive, write write write mode at the beginning.) After six months, I started up again, renewed and revitalized. Three weeks later, I found out that Verge was going to be published. (Like we used to say in the 70’s, “If you love something, let it go. . . ”)
My latest schedule has me writing two hours a day. The main impetus for this shift was, again, life and its request that I have one. Though sometimes two hours feels like not enough. I suspect this will change again in the future, a future that continues to surprise and baffle me. In a good way.
What do you like to read?
Books were a joy when I was young. Beverly Cleary, E. L. Konigsburg, Madeline L’Engle, E. B. White, Louise Fitzhugh, Roald Dahl. Somewhere along the line I lost my passion for reading and shifted my affections to television and the movies. There were still a few writers who managed to snag my attention, though, J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut being the major two.
I was an English major in college, so I must have done some reading then, but I don’t remember much of it. I started again in my early twenties, when I discovered spirituality. No fiction, though. It was all “how to” books: Shakti Gawain, Louise Hay, Course in Miracles, Jerry Jampolsky, Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyer, Sondra Ray, Ram Dass.
I began reading fiction again when I realized I was a lesbian. My favorites included Emma Donaghue, Michelle Tea, Jane Summer, Ann Wadsworth, Sara Waters, Dorothy Allison, Jane Futcher, and Elizabeth Jolley. And then there were the non-lesbians, like Anne Lamott and David Sedaris. But my all-time, hands-down, luuuuuuuuv was Carol Anshaw. Dude. That woman can write. I love her so much I wrote my first three novels in third person, present tense, just like she does. (I’m shifting away from that in novel number four; time to tear myself away mommy.)
When I started my own writing, I branched out as a reader, including more straight folks in the canon. Barbara Kingsolver, Louise Erdrich, Tobias Wolff, T.C. Boyle, Dave Eggers, Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen, John Updike. These days, I’m back to mostly “how to,” especially Eckhart Tolle and the Abraham-Hicks material. What I’m trying to do is read what I want, not what I “should” be reading. Like everything else, it continues to evolve.
What’s the square root of 31,843,449?
5643
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
What’s with the name?
My birth name was Elizabeth Egloff. I was called by my nickname, Betsy, for the first 40 years of my life. I was also called by a bunch of nicknames, including Beatser, Bets, Eggbutt, Eggface, Mudbutt, Jim Dandy, and Z. Z was coined by my friend Phoebe Mix in college (Bet-z, get it?), though back then it was usually prefaced with “the.” A few years ago, realizing that “Betsy” was no longer working for me, I remembered my college nickname and decided to readopt it. It fits my gender flexible presentation and it’s fun to say. Even my parents, who named me in the first place, approve.